Voluntourism: new book explores how volunteer trips harm rather than help

Don't do as we did,' says Pippa Biddle, who highlights colonial structure of industry where unqualified Western tourists pay to volunteer abroad

Seven years ago, Pippa Biddle wrote a blog post about volunteering abroad. She recounted her struggles speaking Spanish to children living with HIV in the Dominican Republic and how local people in Tanzania would spend all night redoing the construction work she and her classmates had done poorly.

Taking part in international aid where you aren't particularly helpful is not benign," Biddle wrote. It's detrimental."